


The great ocean of truth

by linndechir



Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: M/M, Spoilers for Broken Homes, brief mentions of Nightingale/OMC
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-28
Updated: 2014-09-28
Packaged: 2018-02-19 03:26:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2372816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linndechir/pseuds/linndechir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thomas had been fond of Peter from the start, and Peter had settled into his life as easily as if there'd been a place reserved for him all along. In hindsight, it had really taken Thomas an embarrassingly long time to realise that what he felt for his apprentice had long grown into something more than mere fondness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The great ocean of truth

**Author's Note:**

> This is basically the story of Nightingale finally realising he's in love with his apprentice. Many thanks to Iris for beta-reading this, enabling my incessant yelling of headcanons in her inbox, and coming up with a perfect title for this fic because I'm awful at titles. ~~Also, if anyone wants to know more about Henry, LET ME TELL YOU EVERYTHING ABOUT HENRY. I have too much headcanon and too many OCs for Nightingale's pre-war past.~~

Looking back he wondered how he could have missed it for so long.

He'd liked Peter from the start, of course. It was, to a point, a necessary prerequisite for any successful apprenticeship. Certainly not the most important one, but central nonetheless – an apprenticeship lasted ten years at least, and in all likelihood his apprentice would continue to work at the Folly afterwards, so choosing someone he didn't get along with would have been a disaster. And there had been so many things that had drawn him to Peter: his curiosity, his open-mindedness, his willingness to accept things that had to seem unbelievable, his genuine desire to help people, but also simpler things like his wry humour, his enthusiasm, his refusal to be ashamed of the things he enjoyed – even if they were things Thomas had never heard of and that he wasn't entirely sure he _wanted_ to know about.

And although he had noticed that Peter was a handsome young man, that had been completely irrelevant. In his own day there had been liaisons between older apprentices and masters, of course, and some of them had been long-lasting and quite happy, as far as Thomas knew, but he himself never would have entertained such a thought. Neither with his own masters nor with the only other apprentice he'd had before Peter, despite the fact that Edric had had the face of an angel, at least when he'd managed to stop frowning for longer than a second. But those kinds of relationships had always seemed somewhat inappropriate to Thomas – not necessarily coercive, but his idea of love was still one of two equals meeting each other on the same level.

Maybe he had been so blind to this because he'd never expected it, never even imagined it. There was nothing unusual about the fondness he soon developed for Peter. Thomas had been alone for far, far too long, it was only natural that any sort of agreeable company would fill him with more joy than a less lonely person. He knew that he should have taken an apprentice long ago – maybe not right after the war, when magic had seemed to be all but disappearing and he had felt like a superfluous remnant from times past, but certainly once his own reverse ageing had proven beyond doubt how wrong that assessment had been. He had hesitated, though, waited, sometimes just ignored the matter or given himself excuses for not even looking for an apprentice. He'd been neglectful in his duties, he knew that, but it had been hard enough to keep things running without taking on additional responsibilities.

Teaching Peter made him wonder why he had ever waited so long, and at the same time he was grateful that he had – if he'd taken a different apprentice five or ten years ago, who knew if he would have bothered to find Peter again after their first meeting in Covent Garden? He might have missed out on so much. 

And for all that Peter could exasperate him at times with his tendency to get distracted – not that this didn't remind Thomas of himself when he'd been a boy –, his insistence to variate _formae_ he hadn't quite mastered yet – another youthful sin Thomas had been guilty of, until he'd realised that he advanced much faster if he actually listened to his masters every now and then –, and his occasional complaints about the intricacies of Latin grammar (“what did they even _need_ that many forms for, English manages just fine without an ablative”), teaching him was a pure joy. He was dedicated, hard-working, interested (in magic at least, if not so much in Latin), and eager to please in a way that lacked any flattery, that was just genuine enthusiasm and a desire to do well. Thomas loved the delighted laugh Peter gave when he mastered a new _forma_ or a spell, when he finally managed something he'd been trying for weeks, he loved the awed look on Peter's face as if Peter wasn't quite sure whom to be more impressed by – himself for succeeding or Nightingale for introducing him to a whole new world.

But that, that was just appreciation of a good apprentice. And he thought it remained that same affectionate, almost paternal fondness when Peter became his friend. Slowly, he wanted to say, but there had been nothing slow about it. Peter had settled into the Folly so easily, had settled into Thomas' life as if there'd been a spot reserved for him all along. It should have felt intrusive, to have someone with him after decades of sharing the place with no one but Molly, but Peter fitted right in. And it was a joy to see the old place filled with a bit of life again. To hear someone else moving about the house while he was reading, steps on the upper balcony or the stairs, water running in the bathroom on the first floor, noise from the practice rooms, even exasperated groans and muffled cursing from the library. Sometimes Thomas would stop and just listen, and hearing anything at all filled his heart with a warmth that had become quite unfamiliar. Before the war the Folly had never been quiet – someone had always been up, no matter the time of night, working in the library or, far more often, sitting in the smoking lounge, laughing and chatting about a case or the theatre or a new mistress – and compared to those days the Folly was still quiet as a grave. Compared to the last seventy years, it was bustling with life.

Maybe that feeling should have warned him, prepared him for what was happening: that bone-deep warmth he felt when he heard Peter come down the stairs in the morning, when Peter joined him in the reading room, read the crosswords Thomas was doing upside down and provided him with the answer to some question about a film Thomas had never heard of, when Peter smirked a little and sneaked out of the Folly with him for supper without Molly noticing. It made him feel young in a way he was certain he hadn't even the last time he'd looked this age. 

It made him feel the strangest of things – happy.

In hindsight, Thomas realised that he simply hadn't been familiar with the feeling of falling in love. He'd never _fallen_ in love before. He'd loved once ... and that had been so different he could barely compare it to this. Henry had been his best friend since they had been boys, and he had already loved him with the unconditional devotion of a child when their friendship had become more, when they had first kissed one summer on Henry's father's estate, and by the time they first shared each other's bed like men rather than boys, he hadn't even been able to imagine living without Henry anymore. He'd loved Henry so much, he couldn't remember a time when he hadn't. 

There had been ... dalliances, much later. After the war, after his grief had grown from screaming pain into empty numbness, after he had become younger again and thought that, maybe, he ought to go out and familiarise himself with the new world. It had never gone further than a few dinners at nice restaurants – dates, Peter would probably call them – with men he had liked well enough, and while it had been pleasant to have someone to talk to, a friendly conversation that might or might not lead to more, it had always felt meaningless. Like it did a disservice both to himself and to Henry's memory to waste his nights with a stranger.

Any other man, more experienced in the ups and downs of love rather than blessed with early, lasting love only to have it taken from him, would have realised sooner that his fondness for his apprentice had turned into something deeper. Something that couldn't be further from paternal, for all that he was still protective of Peter. But Thomas looked at his own happiness about Peter's presence and saw mere relief at having his loneliness eased; he looked at his terrified concern for Peter when he had almost lost the boy (and that had happened far, far too often already, when he had sworn to protect him) and saw only a master's worry for his charge. He'd outlived one apprentice; he did not think he could bear to lose another.

There was no grand realisation, not when Peter was buried underneath Oxford Circus, not when Peter threw himself off Skygarden to stop the Faceless Man, as he was so fond of calling him, not even when Peter grew too quiet in the weeks after Lesley's betrayal, withdrawn and hurt and only slowly coming out of his shell again. It wasn't the fear of losing him that opened Thomas' eyes.

But there were enough small moments that should have given it away, he told himself later. There had been that one time, weeks after Skygarden, when things between them at least had softened again if nothing else had. They'd been sitting in the coach house together: Thomas had watched the rugby match and found himself oddly reluctant to leave even after it was over, and since Peter had urged him to stay, he had switched through the channels to find a decent looking news programme. Peter had been sitting next to him, his feet pulled up on the couch in a position that looked anything but comfortable to Thomas, tucked under a blanket because it was quite cool despite the heater Peter had installed, his laptop perched precariously on his knees as he was reading something on the screen that seemed to be quite funny, judging by the occasional snorts of laughter and the unwavering smile on his face. Thomas found himself glancing at that smile more often than at the large television – they really weren't saying anything he hadn't already read in the newspaper that morning and the newsreader had a rather unpleasant, shrill voice – but Peter seemed so at ease that he barely noticed. 

Eventually Thomas had tugged on the blanket to cover Peter's feet again after his apprentice had shifted around a little. He hadn't thought about it much and froze when he realised what he'd done, but Peter didn't seem to mind. He wiggled his foot under the blanket in a way that oddly reminded Thomas of a man trying to play with a kitten, and moved ever so slightly into the touch when Thomas allowed himself to let his hand rest on Peter's ankle, just for a moment and through two layers of thick fabric, but it had still felt warm, so very warm. No man should feel such a shudder at the slightest human touch, such a rush of both contentment and excitement, and really, if he hadn't been torn out of his musings by the sudden, loud music of the advertisements that all television programmes seemed to be riddled with, he probably would have realised that very night that he was, indeed, quite inexorably in love with his apprentice.

Instead it happened a few days later, when he came down to the breakfast room to find, unusually enough, Peter already sitting at the table. He was wearing pyjamas – or what Peter seemed to consider pyjamas, loose grey tracksuit bottoms and a worn vest that had been washed thin to the point where it had to be as soft as a wisp of silk – and thick woollen socks against the cold floor of the Folly, and while a younger Thomas Nightingale might have frowned at the lack of decorum, now he merely smiled at the fact that Peter felt so at home (he quite amused himself with the thought of anyone coming down for breakfast in an undershirt when he had been young, and imagined the look on old Master Astley's face if that had happened – he'd behaved as if the end of Western civilisation was near every time someone sat down for breakfast in a perfectly decent dressing gown).

"Good morning, Peter," Thomas said, shrugged out of his suit jacket and draped it carefully over his chair. He couldn't remember when exactly he'd started doing this – some time in the first month or two of Peter's apprenticeship. It had seemed polite to make a small concession to modern familiarity, back when Peter had still come down to breakfast in jeans and a t-shirt, and in the privacy of his home Thomas was quite willing to do that if it made Peter more comfortable. It had seemed to work, and ever since it had become a habit.

"Morning, guv," Peter said with a grin that seemed to go from one ear to the other, and he was rarely in that good a mood this early in the morning. Although to be quite fair, just the night before they'd successfully apprehended a young man, fae apparently, who'd been selling mildly magical and highly addictive potions out of an odd little shop in Camden Lock. Catching him had been quite a feat considering how elusive the suspect had been once he'd realised someone was onto him. Thomas had put what Peter had termed "the fear of Nightingale" in him (he'd sounded terribly proud and impressed and, really, Thomas was far too old to feel as flattered by the look in Peter's eyes as he had), and which Thomas himself merely referred to as reminding the young gentleman that the Folly still kept the peace in this city and that he was very welcome to take his trade somewhere Nightingale would not find him. If he implied in the next breath that he could find him just about anywhere in England and that there would be no friendly warning next time, well, Thomas had been taught by men who held the firm conviction that a certain kind of criminal could only be stopped by the fear of reprisals, not by gentle talking to and the hope that they might better their ways.

"Still basking in your success?" Thomas asked with a small smile of his own. Peter poured some milk into his cup and filled it up with tea – most of the time Thomas was up before him and poured Peter his first cup of tea, and Peter seemed quite happy about an opportunity to return the favour for once. Thomas thanked him and sipped on his tea, not even surprised to find it just the way he liked it, even though he knew that Peter himself preferred a little less milk in his tea than him.

"Our success, sir," Peter corrected with a grin and shovelled a fork full of scrambled egg into his mouth. No culinary extravagances from Molly this morning, although Thomas somehow doubted that even that could have ruined Peter's – or his own – mood. "I would have tried to arrest him, which technically would have been the right thing to do, but I can just imagine how this whole case would have gone over at a trial."

Peter kept chatting happily and didn't even seem all that bothered by Thomas' only intermittent replies – maybe because he realised that Thomas was far from bored or preoccupied, but merely content to listen. Thomas noticed so many things he'd noticed a hundred times before without truly thinking about them: the dimples in Peter's cheeks when he smiled, the way his hands moved animatedly when he recounted a particularly exciting detail of the chase, the mischievous glimmer in his eyes that accompanied every teasing little remark, the way he said "sir" more like a friendly nickname than a sign of hierarchical deference, the intonation so very different from how he said it to Seawoll or any other superior officer.

He knew it then. It was sudden, but nothing like a breakthrough in a case – not like being hit in the face with a new insight that no one had seen coming. He felt more like a man who'd been looking for his keys in his bedroom for an hour, turning out every drawer and looking behind every piece of furniture only to find his keys lying on his desk in plain sight. He knew it with such clarity that he wondered what on earth had kept him from seeing all those small moments of the past months for what they had truly been.

He hadn't noticed falling in love with Peter because he'd never known that feeling before, but one thing he did know was _being_ in love. That warm feeling of contentment, wrapped around his heart, settled deep in his gut, tingling in his fingers, something he'd mistaken for mere fondness and gratitude, but he should have known better. Fondness didn't go so deep, fondness didn't threaten to make him break into a smile as wide as Peter's own as he joked about the look on their suspect's face after Nightingale was done with him, fondness did not make him feel dizzy and clear-headed at the same time. Thomas had never thought of love as a sad feeling – he'd never pined for someone who did not return his feelings, had never longed for something he could not have. Even when he'd lost Henry, it had never been his love for him that had brought him to tears, only the loss of that love. 

And there was no sadness in what he felt for Peter now, only a profound pleasure in being near him, and he realised that in his own way Peter had slotted himself into his life as completely, as intricately as Henry had once done when they had been boys. There were wounds and old scars and deep crevices now that hadn't been there when Thomas had been young, and he knew that Peter would never fill all the empty spaces that grief and loss had left in him, but he filled some of them, he did not rub and chafe against old wounds, but merely filled part of the emptiness, not a replacement for all Thomas had lost, far from that, but something new and in no way lesser than what he'd had before.

"Sir?" Peter prompted and Thomas realised he'd remained quiet for too long, but Peter's voice stayed soft, gentle almost. 

"Ah," Thomas said, "I'm afraid you quite overestimate just how impressed he was by my threats. I wouldn't be surprised if we found him right back there in a few months."

"I'll take that bet," Peter grinned, visibly relieved. "You win, I'll pay for dinner at a place of your choice."

"And if you win?" Thomas asked – after all, he picked up their tab half the time anyway; it simply seemed like the reasonable thing to do when Peter was paid half as much money as him and Thomas was the one who dragged him with him to eat out in the first place.

"I'll think of something," Peter said and winked, and Thomas told himself that his apprentice certainly hadn't meant for that to sound quite as flirtatious as it did.

"That's not how bets work," he pointed out and manoeuvred a bit of egg onto his fork – he'd barely eaten yet, and he didn't want Molly to get that concerned, disapproving look on her face again.

"Don't worry about it, sir, not if you're that certain about this whole thing." And Peter kept grinning, although he promised he'd actually come up with a proper bet before Thomas would agree to shake hands on it. His smile seemed undefeatable that morning, and for a brief moment Thomas felt the urge to run his fingertips over Peter's cheek, retrace the dimples of his smile, watch his mouth relax even as his eyes stayed bright and happy, and press a soft kiss onto Peter's lips. He wanted to feel Peter's smile against his skin, wanted him to breathe out a happy little laugh against Thomas' mouth, a laugh and much later a moan, muffled between their lips, but it was the laugh that he wanted more.

He wasn't going to do anything like that, of course. Not only because it was inappropriate – Peter was his apprentice, his subordinate, dependent on Thomas in a way that no other constable was on his superior, not to mention about 90 years younger than him – but simply because he hadn't the slightest idea whether Peter shared his feelings. He wondered if that too was something he'd missed in his blindness, in his hurried willingness to dismiss every bit of affection between them as merely friendly, but even if that was the case, it would still be up to Peter to make that first step if he ever wanted to.

Not that Thomas needed him to. It wasn't only that he wasn't in a hurry, but that he had no expectations in that regard. He wanted to kiss Peter, kiss him softly in the mornings and kiss him breathless at night, but he was so happy just being around him that a lack of physical affection could never ruin it. He wouldn't love Peter any less for not loving him back, or for loving him differently. It seemed like such a small thing compared to the things that truly mattered, to their easy companionship, to the renewed happiness in Peter's eyes, to the warmth Thomas felt now when he'd grown so very used to the cold numbness of an empty house.

He had breakfasts and suppers with Peter, practice sessions and Latin lessons, work and cases to talk about and long evenings in the coach house with rugby and beer and pizza. When they shared everything already, what did it matter that he didn't share Peter's bed; he still lacked for nothing.

And yet a part of him, a quiet, optimistic part that felt so unfamiliar that he barely recognised it as a long forgotten trait of the man he'd once been, dared to hope that maybe one day, Peter would have a moment very similar to this, and wonder how he'd not realised before that he loved Thomas every bit as much as Thomas loved him.


End file.
